Todd >  A further confounding factor that you didn't mention may be
calories.  The Okinawans just eat less than most other people.

Interesting.

Todd > So, your position is that everything that isn't meat is
inessential.  And therefore...risky?  Undesirable?  Is it your view
that the best diet for humans is exclusively animal-derived?  I don't
deny that grains would have been an adjunct paleo food.  So would nuts
and berries and many other plant foods that available only seasonally.
What I'm trying to get at is your construal of "paleo."  Is it...avoid
adjunct foods?

It's beware adjunct foods.  And of course there are degrees of
"adjunctness," if you will.  Degrees of "paleoness."  Wild fruits, for
instance, were seasonal.  But I'd consider these high fiber, low carb
fruits paleo.  Grains, which are much smaller and less easy to utilize
in the wild, in my opinion would have been eaten sparingly, if at all.
But I believe that plenty of food was available the overwhelming
majority of the time.

Yes, meat is the only essential food.  Steffanson et al showed that we
can thrive on meat only.  Not that other food items aren't good for us
and weren't consumed frequently by our paleo and meso forebears.   But
that's where you open the door to whether a food item is paleo or not.


Look, you seem to focus a lot on the fringe, adjunct foods, which is
fine theoretically: It's fun to argue about.  But it's also dangerous
to most on this list who are trying to figure out what to throw down
the gullet this evening for dinner.  I'm simply saying "caveat emptor"
with the fringe items -- they make a huge difference to someone like me
who gets very sick eating wheat.

Todd > Why would *anyone*, minority or not, undertake the
labor-intensive cultivation of something that they regarded as only
marginally edible?

Oh, I think that those who invented farming thought they'd come up with
a helluva idea.  And those who were later exposed to it apparently
agreed or else it wouldn't have swept the world like it did and end the
Stone Age for the overwhelming majority of the world.  But your point
was that "people were eating grains."  Yes, those who "invented"
farming must have been or they'd had nothing to invent.  But the
overwhelming majority of the world's population since time immemorial
decidedly did *not( eat grass seeds except as an occasional experiment
perhaps.  That's my point.